GoT S1E2: Are the Books this Raunchy?
Jan. 7th, 2022 07:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerI knew as I started watching Game of Thrones there was going to be a lot of raunchy sex in it. That's only what... basically everyone... joked about it when aired years ago. But here at just S1E2 I'm already wondering, "Were the books this raunchy?" Because when it comes to Game of Thrones, unlike Wheel of Time, I'm an NBV— a Non-Book Viewer. I haven't read these books. I can't compare the show to the source material. Is the level of sex because author George R. R. Martin wrote the series like novel-length Playboy stories; or is it because that's what HBO, known for playing up the amount of skin and voyeurism in its shows, ordered up in this screen adaptation?
The thing that had me rolling my eyes at how the plot and character development seemingly revolve around sex in this episode involved Daenerys Targaryen. In the previous episode she was married off to Dothraki warlord Khal Drogo, played by the one-note Jason Momoa. In this episode we see her continuing to suffer physically whenever he chooses to have sex with her. But then one of her maids tells her stories about her time serving in a brothel— which she was sold to at age 9, BTW!— and how better to satisfy a man sexually. After Daenerys "practices" with her maid in an ambiguously bisexual bedroom scene she proposes a different sexual position to Drogo next time he tries to grab her and throw her face-down on the floor. Suddenly, having sex while riding him cowgirl, she feels so much more empowered & physically comfortable.
If the books were like this there's no way I would've kept reading them. Understand, though, it's not because I'm prudish about sex or anything. They'd just be far too tedious as porn stories.
The thing that had me rolling my eyes at how the plot and character development seemingly revolve around sex in this episode involved Daenerys Targaryen. In the previous episode she was married off to Dothraki warlord Khal Drogo, played by the one-note Jason Momoa. In this episode we see her continuing to suffer physically whenever he chooses to have sex with her. But then one of her maids tells her stories about her time serving in a brothel— which she was sold to at age 9, BTW!— and how better to satisfy a man sexually. After Daenerys "practices" with her maid in an ambiguously bisexual bedroom scene she proposes a different sexual position to Drogo next time he tries to grab her and throw her face-down on the floor. Suddenly, having sex while riding him cowgirl, she feels so much more empowered & physically comfortable.
If the books were like this there's no way I would've kept reading them. Understand, though, it's not because I'm prudish about sex or anything. They'd just be far too tedious as porn stories.
